Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts

Download or read book Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts written by James Elkins and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elkins argues that writing is what art historians produce, and, whether such writing is a transparent vehicle for the transmission of facts or an embattled forum for the rehearsal of institutional relations and constructions of history, it is an expressive medium, with the capacity for emotion and reflection. Therefore, it needs to be taken seriously for its own sake: it is the testament of art history and of individual historians, and it is only weakened and slighted by versions of history that imagine it either as uncontrolled dissemination or as objective discovery and reporting.